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Dark Lady Players |
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The Dark Lady Players perform the underlying allegories in the Shakespearean plays, showing that they are comic religious satires. This raises a profound question about how such parodies could have got into the plays, which leads to the latest authorship theory, that a major author of the plays was the Dark Lady, the experimental poet Amelia Bassano Lanier.
Schedule of Upcoming Productions
Production History
As You Like It: the Big Flush
| Open: 07/20/08 Close: 08/03/08
The Dark Lady Players, one of the world's most experimental Shakespeare companies, perform the allegorical level of the Shakespearean plays to show that they were written by England's only Jewish poet the so-called 'Dark Lady', Amelia Bassano Lanier (1569-1645). Living as a hidden Jew (a Marrano or Converso) she was mistress to the man in charge of the English theater and the first woman in England to publish a book of original poetry. This retelling of AYLI highlights the two characters called Jaques/Jakes (Elizabethan for toilet), and the character whose pocket watch identifies him as Sir John Harrington, the inventor of the flush toilet! The play turns out to be a Jewish toilet joke written using double allegories. What are these characters, a dunghill, and many references to excrement doing in this play? Why does As You Like It end with Jaques warning that Noah's flood is coming? Why are there other flood references, like Hercules cleansing the Augean stables of manure? Why does Touchstone go off to the ark with Audrey, who is named after St Ethelreda, the woman who was saved from a flood? Could this be the Last Day? And who is Touchstone (in Greek the basanos)?Could he be an allegory for Amelia Bassano herself? | |
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Hamlet's Apocalypse
| Open: 11/07/10 Close: 11/09/10
The Dark Lady Players present a black comedy showing “Hamlet” is a comic Jewish parody of the Book of Revelation and was written by the ‘Dark Lady’ of the Sonnets, Amelia Bassano Lanier.This allegorical meta-theatrical production takes place on Doomsday. The Anti-Christ (Hamlet) and son of the Devil (King Hamlet) kills Christ (Laertes) and God the Father (Polonius). The Virgin Mary (Ophelia) tries to help by rising into heaven as the Woman Crowned with the Sun, but falls into the water and drowns. Hamlet then kills his own tribe, the Whore of Babylon (Gertrude) and the Seven Headed Beast of the Apocalypse (Claudius) before dying himself. And instead of the golden city of Jerusalem descending from the sky, what comes on stage is a parody from the Arabian Nights, a Fort-in-Brass. About the Company: Dark Lady Players The Dark Lady Players perform the underlying allegories in the Shakespearean plays, showing that they are comic religious satires. This raises a profound question about how such parodies could have got into the plays, which leads to the latest authorship theory, that a major author of the plays was the Dark Lady, the experimental poet Amelia Bassano Lanier. | |
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Shakespeare's Gospel Parodies: A Medieval Mystery Tour
| Open: 09/11/11 Close: 09/25/11
The Dark Lady Players present a selection of Shakespeare’s religious parodies, taken from various plays, and arranged in a Medieval Mystery Tour around a 17,000 sq foot nineteenth century church building. This production puts a modern twist on the Medieval Mystery Play Cycle with a “Living Museum” performance which takes place on sets that the Woodshed Collective have created for their production of The Tenant. The audience walks around the building following the story. There are stairs and no elevator. The Tour may be joined at any time within the first 45 minutes.
Have you ever wondered why the Shakespeare plays contain 14 resurrections, 12 Apocalypses, 5 Virgin Mary Allegories, 3,000 additional religious references, a variety of Christ figures and were written using 14 different translations of the Bible. And yet none of the plays end in Paradise? Come and find out. | |
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